1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a tray ID management method used therein, and a computer-readable recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
A tray identification data (ID) is used to identify a feed tray, and different image forming apparatus manufactures use, for example, different tray IDs.
Therefore, an image forming apparatus has been available that has a function to specify a plurality of tray IDs to a feed tray, so that the same feed tray can be identified by using different tray IDs. With such a function, when a tray ID is assigned to each feed tray, exclusive control is performed so that the same tray ID cannot be assigned to different feed trays.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-281111 discloses a technology regarding a protocol analyzer that can analyze a unique protocol and an extended protocol specification by registering the unique protocol specification and the extended protocol specification.
In the above conventional image forming apparatus, for example, if an optional tray is inserted thereto as a feed tray, a tray ID is assigned to the optional tray according to an instruction from a user. Then, if the optional tray is removed from the image forming apparatus, the tray ID assigned to the removed optional tray can be assigned also to another feed tray. Thus, if the optional tray is again inserted thereto, the same tray ID may be assigned to a plurality of different feed trays, as a result. Therefore, among the feed trays having the same tray ID, the feed trays having lower priorities may become unusable.
Thus, applying the technology described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-281111 can be considered to solve the problem. The technology, however, is model-dependent, and thus, cannot be applied to the above image forming apparatus.